For stable production of biofuel or bioplastics, low cost and stable supply of their raw material sugar is desired. The representative example of the raw material sugar is sugar accumulated in sugarcane. Extraction of sugar from sugarcane generally requires processes such as cutting down of sugarcane at a predetermined harvest time, crushing, pressing, concentration, and purification. Moreover, after harvest, the farmland requires management work such as maintenance of farm for new cultivation, planting, and spraying herbicides and insecticides. The production of the raw material sugar with plants such as sugarcane has been conventionally a process requiring a great deal of cost such as that for the production process and the cultivation, as described above.
Patent Literature 1 discloses a method for recovering a heterologous protein encoded by a heterologous gene from a plant transformed to express the heterologous gene. The method disclosed in Patent Literature 1 comprises collecting an exudate from a plant transformed to express a heterologous gene and recovering the heterologous protein from the collected exudate. Examples of the exudate in Patent Literature 1 include exudate from the rhizome and the guttation exuded from a plant as an exudate through the hydathode of the leaf.
Patent Literature 2 and Non Patent Literature 1 disclose transporter proteins involved in sugar transport in plant in Arabidopsis thaliana and rice (Oryza sativa). The transporter proteins disclosed in Patent Literature 2 and Non Patent Literature 1 are known as GLUE proteins or SWEET proteins. Introduction of a nucleic acid encoding a transporter protein disclosed in Patent Literature 2 and Non Patent Literature 1 into a plant may improve the amount of sugar transport to root.
Non Patent Literature 2 describes the confirmation of function of a cell membrane small molecule transporter by artificially localizing the cell membrane transporter on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and measuring the small molecule transporter activity of the ER. In particular, the glucose transporters GLUTs and SGLTs were localized on the ER and their original functions were speculated using FRET (Forster resonance energy transfer or fluorescence resonance energy transfer).